


A Penny for the Old Guy

by ignipes



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-16
Updated: 2006-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Birthdays are just another way of passing time until you reach the year you're not going to make it through.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Penny for the Old Guy

The old man's mind is wandering and his hands are shaking. He fumbles with his wallet, and about a dozen fake IDs and pieces of paper spill onto the table. He finds a picture tucked in between a couple of grimy dollar bills and passes it over to Dean.

"That's my Greta," he says, sweeping the scattered IDs and scraps into a pile. "The day we took our girls to Coney Island."

Dean unfolds the photograph. It's a black-and-white of a nice-looking woman with blonde hair and a floral-print dress; there's a smiling little girl holding on to each of her hands. One of the girls has a wad of cotton candy; the other has a stuffed horse under her arm.

"What happened to them?" Dean asks as he hands the photograph back.

"Greta took off, married a lawyer," the old man says. "He bought Heather a pony." He picks up his glass and drains the last of his beer, then slides it across the table. "Next round's on you." He winks, wrinkled lid over a clouded eye. "It's my birthday."

The last two rounds have been on Dean. He smiles crookedly. "What a coincidence. Mine too."

But he stands up and heads over to the bar.

-

On his eighth birthday, Dean's father gives him his first gun.

"We'll go out to the field tomorrow, get you used to using it," Dad says.

Dad's smiling down at him like he's waiting for an answer, so Dean tells him, "It's great, Dad."

He wanted a new baseball glove because his hand is too big for the old one, but a gun is pretty cool too. It's heavy and awkward in his hands, slick with polish and cool to the touch. Dean holds it up, tries to imagine loading it, aiming it, firing it like Dad does, stopping some monster in its tracks.

"It's great," he says again. "I like it a lot."

Dad just smiles and ruffles Dean's hair.

-

"I can't believe you're listening to that guy." The bartender is about Dean's age, with long-hair and a scruffy beard, the type of kid who comes up to Kalispell for the summer but gets stuck for the winter. He hands two more beers to Dean and shakes his head. "I've never heard such a load of bullshit in my life."

"It's better than being out there," Dean replies easily, nodding toward the window. Outside it's snowing sideways, bitter Montana wind whipping down the empty streets. The motel across the road is just about invisible through the blizzard, its neon "Vacancy" sign no more than a faint reddish glow.

"I guess. But he's a crazy old dude, I'm telling you."

Dean smirks. "Maybe he just knows more than you do."

"Yeah, right." The bartender dismisses the possibility with a wave of his towel.

-

On his twenty-seventh birthday, Dean comes out of the bathroom to find Sam sitting on the bed, their dad's journal in his hands.

"Come on," he says, snatching the journal and tossing it aside. "We're going out."

Sam glares up at him. "What?"

"Going out. You do remember what that means, don't you?"

"Dean, I don't know. I don't feel--"

"Dude, it's my birthday. I'm not sitting around some crappy-ass motel room on my birthday."

"I know, it's just..." Sam picks at the edge of the ugly motel comforter.

Dean tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his stomach. "Just what?"

Sam doesn't look up. "It's...it was Jess's birthday, too."

About a dozen replies race through Dean's mind -- _shit_ and _she's dead but I'm not_ and _Jesus-fucking-Christ_ and _so this is also ruined now_ \-- but all he says is, "Fine. Whatever. I'll be back later."

"Dean--" Sam swings his feet off the bed, starts to stand up, but Dean shoves him back down.

"Don't stay up past your bedtime," Dean says. He slams the door on his way out.

He comes back a few hours later, bringing the smell of booze and smoke and sex in on a gust of cold winter wind. Sam is asleep and the heater is blasting out air like the fucking breath of hell. Dean strips off his jacket and flannel shirt, fighting down the sudden nausea in his gut, and stumbles into the bathroom.

Leaning on the edge of the sink, he splashes some cold water on his face, then shuts off the water and sinks down to the floor in front of the toilet. He rests his head on the side of the bathtub, his eyes squeezed shut, his cheek pressed against the cool porcelain.

The next morning, he wakes up in bed.

There's a glass of water on the nightstand and the shades are drawn against the bright morning sun, but Sam doesn't say anything and Dean doesn't ask.

-

The old guy is staring out the window like he sees something besides his own reflection and that bitch of a storm.

"The first is always the hardest," the man says. He tilts his glass from side to side; the last couple inches of beer slosh back and forth. "You don't really believe it until the first time. Think maybe it's all a joke. Maybe you're imagining things after all."

There's a draft through the window. Dean pulls his jacket tighter about himself and hunches down, trying not to shiver.

"But that first time..." The old man takes a swallow of his beer. "That's when it hits you. You're in some old house, old factory, old cemetery, doesn't much matter. And you're alone. Even if you've got somebody else along, you're alone, because it's dark and in the dark you're always alone. There are walls or trees or shadows, things moving in the corner of your eyes, you're about to piss yourself or throw up you're so scared, can't even hold the gun still or keep the flashlight steady. And you keep telling yourself, it ain't real, it's just kids playing in the dark, just bums, somebody, some _person_ making those noises. You ought to be laughing at yourself, you ought to be worried you're gonna shoot some dumb teenager, just around that next corner, in that next room, you can hear them whispering, just over there..."

A couple of guys over at the bar burst out laughing. Dean turns to look, watches the display of back-slapping and bottle-clinking, sees the bartender set a couple of shots in front of them and say something with a friendly smile.

"Sometimes," the old man says, and Dean looks back at him, "sometimes I think...I wonder if that first time, if it'd just been a bunch of teenagers..." He stops, clears his throat, and doesn't say anything more.

-

On his twenty-third birthday, Dean and his father are in a campground in Moab, watching the sun set in brilliant red and gold over the desert. Dad's been quiet all day, not saying much of anything since they cleaned out that haunted shack up in Green River, and now he's sitting at the picnic table with a bottle of beer in one hand and a thick old book in the other.

The night is warm for January, even in Utah, and Dean's too restless to sit so he takes a walk around the campground. It's nearly full, crowded with yuppies in their loaded SUVs, "Free Tibet" stickers on the bumpers and three thousand dollar mountain bikes on the racks, armed to conquer the desert with spandex and Power Bars and plastic helmets.

Dean shoves his hands into his pockets and rounds the bend at the end of the campground, turning into the setting sun. They were in Moab when he was a kid, years ago. He remembers camping out at Arches, listening to coyotes howl through the night, grumbling and whining when Dad woke him and Sammy up before dawn and dragged them across a slickrock trail to watch the sun rise on the burnt-red rocks. There was a thunderstorm in the evening and they had to pack up a damp tent in the morning, shoving sleeping bags and clothes and muddy shoes into the trunk of the car before rolling out through the sleepy little strip of grimy gas stations and run-down bars, a blink-and-you-miss-it town that's just a stop between one place and another.

The sun slips behind the horizon, and the wind picks up almost immediately. Dean stops, pulls out his cell phone, flips it open. It's got a strong signal, but nobody's called all day.

Used to be that this was the kind of place you'd go to be out of touch. Just the sun and rock and wind and sky, and if somebody was calling they'd better be shouting real loud to be heard.

Dean was just a kid, barely remembers it, but he thinks he liked it better that way.

He snaps his phone shut and heads back to the campsite.

-

The old man folds and unfolds the photograph along a well-worn crease.

"Greta never liked it," he says, dragging his finger through the ring of condensation his glass left on the table. "But she put up with it, saw that I was doing something good, until..."

The old man is silent for so long Dean thinks he's lost his train of thought again. "Until?"

"Until Katie." He unfolds the photograph, taps the little girl holding the cotton candy. Her dark hair is in long braids; her patent leather shoes are shiny and smooth. "She was our baby. Greta wanted a whole bunch of kids, but Katie was a tough one and after she was born the doctors said no more."

Dean swallows, almost afraid to ask. "What happened to her?"

"Rawhead."

"Shit." Dean looks down awkwardly. "That's rough."

"You ever run into a Rawhead?"

Shifting in his chair, Dean resists the urge to draw his feet up off the floor. He can still feel the cold hand closing around his ankle, the sickening sensation of falling headfirst down the stairs, can still hear Dad's startled shout and the dull thud of his own head hitting the wooden steps.

"Yeah," he says. "A while back."

"You know how to kill it?"

Dad had pumped it full of more rounds than he could count, but the thing had still been growling and scrambling along the damp cement floor when they lit out of that house.

Shaking his head, Dean says, "Nope. Never did figure it out."

The old man points a gnarled finger at Dean and twitches his thumb-trigger. "Zap it."

"Yeah? Like with a stun gun?"

"Sure thing. Zap it with as many volts as you can, fry the sucker until it melts away. Works every time."

Dean makes a mental note to tell Dad. Seems like this old guy has some useful information after all. Maybe this trip won't be entirely wasted.

"I didn't know it then. Had to figure it out myself, after it was too late for Katie." The old man lifts his glass, pauses. "Found her in the cellar, drowned in two inches of water. Washing machine had a leak. She was six, almost seven."

Dean doesn't know what to say to that, so he keeps quiet, running his finger around the rim of his glass. The glass is empty and so is the old guy's, but even Dean knows that there's something wrong about jumping up for another round just as soon as a guy's done telling you about his dead daughter.

"How old are you, boy?"

Surprised, Dean looks up. "Twenty-five." He's got an ID in his wallet that says he's twenty-nine, another in his pocket that says he's nineteen, but for this guy he lets the truth out. It seems pointless to lie about it on his birthday.

The old man scoffs, like he doesn't believe it anyway. "What the hell," he says, shaking his head. "What the hell."

-

On his twenty-sixth birthday, Dean's hundreds of miles from Ohio, fucking some girl against the filthy bathroom wall of a Boston bar.

She's blonde and pale and brash, the opposite of what he wants, but her eyes are closed and she's moaning some other guy's name anyway. She smells like she swallowed a handful of breath mints and showered in perfume, and he can see the clumps of mascara on her eyelashes, the creases of her lips through her lipstick, the dark roots of her hair.

He remembers the graffiti on the wall behind her. He remembers her skirt bunched around her waist, her sweaty hands twisted into his shirt, remembers that she was hot and slick and ready. He remembers the way she threw back her head, remembers that there, in that moment, long neck and unrestrained cries, she might have been beautiful. He remembers slapping the wall as he came, pulling out and lowering her to the floor, looking away as she straightened her skirt and he snapped the condom off. He remembers the click of her heels on the tiles, the music playing out in the bar -- _nice day for a white wedding_ \-- the dizzy way the bathroom spun around him and the name of the dude she'd been wishing was fucking her. He remembers the scratches she left on his neck, the headache he woke up with the next morning, the shit the bartender gave him for trying to use a canceled credit card. He remembers that he told her he was a fireman, remembers the sickening way the mingled smell of smoke and spilled beer and perfume permeated all of his clothes until he finally chucked them all in a washer two states away.

But he doesn't remember her name.

He doesn't even remember if he ever knew it at all.

-

"The thing is," the old guy says, finally tucking the photograph away in his wallet, "when you go, you gotta make sure you don't come back."

Dean watches the man drop his wallet on the table, watches the two fingers on his left hand that don't bend, the tick in his right eye, the nervous way he glances out the window every ten seconds.

That's what happens, he thinks. That's what happens when hunters live long enough to get old. Sure as hell ain't pretty.

He wonders if this is how Dad will turn out, scarred and broken, telling stories that nobody believes in shitty Montana bars and showing photographs to strangers.

Dean looks down at his right hand, flexes his fingers, closes them into a fist, opens them again.

He wonders if this is how he'll turn out, too.

"Don't come back," the old man says again, "don't outstay your welcome and don't leave nothing behind for other folks to deal with."

What the hell. Dean raises his glass. "I'll drink to that."

The old man taps his glass against Dean's. His hands are steady for the first time all night.

"Salt and burn," he says, like a toast or benediction. "Salt and burn."

-

On Dean's eleventh birthday Dad is in the hospital.

Dean and Sam stay with Pastor Jim for a long time, going by to visit Dad each day after school. By the time Dad gets out everybody's forgotten that Dean's not ten anymore. He tells himself it's stupid to be angry about that -- Dad could have _died_ and he's a big selfish baby for missing presents and cake -- and he does his best to forget about it.

A few months later they're in New York City for the first time. Dean and Sammy are on Spring Break from school, and Dad wants to meet up with some people he's heard about, people who have been hunting a lot longer than he has. Dean doesn't like the city at first -- too many people, too many buildings, too many places Sammy can wander off and get lost -- but Dad's in a good mood and he comes back to the motel room one morning holding something behind his back.

"Guess what I got," he says, grinning down at where Dean and Sam are playing with Sammy's G.I. Joes on the floor.

Sammy's got a one-track mind, and he bounces to his feet, shouting, "Candy!"

More warily, Dean stands up too. "What?" He remembers that Sammy's birthday is coming up, but he's not sure Dad does.

Dad's grin gets bigger, and he whips an envelope out from behind his back. "Seems to me," he says, "we all got a little distracted back in January, when a certain somebody turned eleven years old."

Dean looks down at his feet. "'S'no big deal," he mumbles, but it feels like there's a bubble swelling in his chest and he's trying real hard not to smile.

Dad shoves the envelope under his nose. "It _is_ a big deal."

"Open it!" Sammy shouts, dancing around Dean in circles. "Open your present!"

Dean rolls his eyes; the stupid kid can't say anything in a normal voice these days. But he lifts the flap of the envelope and he knows what's inside even before he gets it all the way open. He saw it on the news last night, the sports guys talking about it: it's Opening Day at Shea Stadium. Dad's got three tickets to the game.

Sammy's disappointed that it's not candy, but Dean can't remember the last time he got a present that wasn't boring clothes or shoes or weapons, and he almost knocks Dad over with a hug that's all flying arms and legs and laughter.

Later, at the game, he wants to do it again, but he's too embarrassed to hug in public so he just settles for smiling like a lunatic when Dad buys him a hat at the stadium shop. Then they get hot dogs and Cokes -- and candy for Sammy -- and Dean's practically dragging them behind him because the game is about the start and he doesn't want to miss any of it. Their seats are in the nosebleed section, way out in the outfield, but when the game starts everybody's screaming and Dad's laughing and Sammy's jumping up and down on the seat between them. Dean cheers for every player who gets a hit, no matter what team they're on.

He thinks it might be the best birthday he's ever had, even if it isn't his birthday at all.

-

It's summer the next time he makes it up to Kalispell. There's a different bartender, a cute brunette chick, but she nods thoughtfully and says, "Yeah, I remember that old guy. Crazy as a loon, but nice. Why?"

"He still around?" Dean asks, but he knows the answer before she even opens her mouth.

"No, he died about six, eight months ago. Did you know him?"

"Not really." He shrugs to show her it's no big deal. "What happened to him?"

"It was the craziest thing." The girl laughs in that way people do when it's not really funny. "They think he killed himself, but they're not really sure because he did such a thorough job of it. He had fireworks and explosives all wired up in this shack out east of Whitefish, blasted the place to pieces. There wasn't anything left."

"Nothing?"

The girl shakes her head. "It was crazy. All over the news."

"Yeah." Dean tries to smile, knows that it must look more like a grimace. "Crazy."

-

On Dean's twenty-eighth birthday, Sam comes out of the bathroom and throws a shoe at him.

"Come on. Get up."

Dean throws the shoe back, twice as hard, and is gratified to see Sam wince just a little bit when it hits. "Why?"

"It's your birthday, moron. We're going out."

"Going out?" Dean asks, not bothering to hide his disbelief. "_You_ want to go out? Who are you and what have you done with my brother?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "Bite me. Yeah, we're going out. You do remember what that means, don't you?" When Dean only stares at him, Sam shrugs and smiles a little bit. "Hey, I only have two more years to mock you about almost turning thirty. Got to get a head start, warm up for the real thing."

It's the way he says it -- _two more years_ \-- like it's nothing, like it doesn't even occur to him that he might not be around in two years.

Dean sits up slowly, reaching for his t-shirt. "Alright," he says, "but you're paying."

Sam opens the motel room door. Cold winter wind blasts in, and Dean scrambles for his jacket.

"Sure I'm paying," Sam agrees. "With your money."

His grin turns into a laugh, and he's still laughing as Dean follows him out to the car.


End file.
